FreeBSD pkg_add little trick

So don’t ask me why but I decided to run FreeBSD 6.0 on an older Dell Latitude laptop. Install goes fine. But now I’ve got an issue. When trying to install a package I get the troublesome ftp error (cannot find this location dummy). But this was quickly resolved with the following.

You can also see which ftp directory your FreeBSD system is currently using by reading the error received when you try to install a bogus package:

# pkg_add -r test
Error: FTP Unable to get ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-release/Latest/abc.tbz: File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)
pkg_add: unable to fetch ‘ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-release/Latest/abc.tbz’ by URL

In this case, the system is using packages-6-release/Latest which contains the 6.9 version of xorg instead of packages-6-stable which contains the latest or 7.2 version of xorg. Take a peek in both directories on the ftp site, you’ll see for yourself.

You can ask pkg_add to go to a different location by modifying the PACKAGESITE environmental variable by typing this as one line:

# setenv PACKAGESITE ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-stable/Latest/

And Eureka! No more install issues.

And as always, thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have any comments, questions, or critiques, please reach out to me on our FREE ML Security Discord Server – HERE